


a fire unseen

by triple_phoenix



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, endgame spoilers, listen this game really messed me up, panam palmer lives rent free in my head, the sapphic power V and panam possess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28633770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triple_phoenix/pseuds/triple_phoenix
Summary: Panam thinks about how, not that long ago, V had run her hands over her legs, her thighs; thinks of how quickly she had turned V down. Then Panam thinks, almost miserably, of their shaky breaths together in the Basilisk; of the sand howling and throwing itself at the trailer walls; of how V’s body could have been pressed against hers if she hadn’t stopped her then, how her hands could have been feeling for every curve and crevice on Panam’s skin, her mouth ghosting over Panam’s face and neck in hot, deep breaths. She could have taken V’s face in her hands, could have lost herself in her eyes until they melted together on that fucking couch.Panam wouldn’t stop her this time, this she knows.-(ending spoilers) panam and V: before, during, and after mikoshi.
Relationships: Panam Palmer/Female V
Comments: 17
Kudos: 200





	a fire unseen

**Author's Note:**

> beta'd by mesker. thanks you old coot

A call goes out too damn early in the morning.

Panam fumbles awake, fingers grasping. She fishes around for the phone buried beneath the blankets. The tent around her swirls the way it always does when she wakes before she’s supposed to, the sand creeping in from below the flaps to flounder around. Her eyes are still heavy and crusted from sleep, but then the caller logo flits up on the screen, two proud diagonal lines of gold, joined together at the end, and Panam answers before she can think. “V?”

There’s nothing but V’s holo at first. She stands neutral and idle, arms crossed; looks elsewhere, as if she’d never planned to call. Panam does a little scoff, calming her nerves, thinking it’s some sort of butt dial, but then there’s a “Hey, Pan,” from the other end, and the tone in her voice belies her holo. V sounds small, much smaller—scared. Nothing at all like the one Panam knows. Something is wrong.

“Better be a good reason wanting me up this late,” Panam jokes, offering a reprieve, but V’s silence is deflating, concerning.

“Look, some—something’s come up,” V says guardedly, and then a flurry of words Panam hardly registers: “I don’t—I don’t know where to go, Pan, dunno what to do, and every choice I try turns out to be a dead fucking end . . . but, I was thinking . . . what if, maybe—" She stops.

“V?”

She doesn’t respond.

Panam sits up. A million possibilities run through her head: Raffens, Arasaka, Militech, maybe some gang V pissed off, a gig she canned, but none of them seem to feed into the fear Panam’s already imagined, already knows. She’s known it as soon as she saw the caller ID and the time of day and the way V’s voice sounded small and swallowed up—in pain, just like it did the day she passed out in camp, talking nonsense about some chip in her head, and somehow Panam dreaded, no— _knew_ that it was going to end this way.

Outside the tent, the world is barely awake, everything still and slow to start, but Panam’s mind won’t stop racing. There’s a cold chill itching at her fingers and running dangerously fast up her neck. She gets up from bed.

“Dammit, V - Tell me where you are or I’ll find you myself.” Panam’s already going for her boots. “What’s going on? Are you safe?”

Finally, V tells her: Silverhand. Relic. Arasaka Tower. Access Point. Mikoshi. Panam gathers it in bits and bulk, so focused she can hardly think about breathing. I know this is too big of a favor to ask, V stupidly goes, and Panam isn’t even thinking about that; it’s about what little semblance of stability V has left in her voice, knowing time is running out, knowing there might not be any more favors to ask after this, so of course I’m going to fucking help, Panam says, insists, and presses V until she gives her the address.

“It’s the one behind—”

“I know where the damn ripper is. I’ll be there soon.”

“Pan—"

“Do not even think about dying, you hear me?” And Panam’s out the tent, halfway to Saul’s with her throat closed and aching, a half-baked plan teetering on her shoulders. She’ll worry about hammering in the points later. “Don’t go anywhere. I’m coming to get you.”

And so the next moment she’s going over a hundred and unblinking, the road getting eaten up in front of her. She could have sworn just a minute ago Saul was yelling something over her shoulder, and she was yelling back, telling him they could plan it over on the holo, but that was an hour ago. The Thornton’s engine roars and roars, but Panam’s mind is louder, demanding for urgency. It tells her what she must do, what she must avoid, because every second she wastes is a second closer to failing. She has to be careful, even if each crack and hole adorning these roads have long been imprinted on her memory for years.

Night City comes into view after two hours, maybe a little more. To Panam it feels only minutes. One blink of an eye and then it’s Santo Domingo; the next it’s the tunnel to Watson. Finally she sees Misty’s Esoterica Shop and she veers the Thornton violently to the right, parking it just outside the front door, ignorant to the skid marks and the potent, burning smell of rubber as she flies out of the car.

"Hey,” is all Panam can say, a dozen knocks on the door later. Her mind is still running. There is little room in her head to process what she sees or feels. Each action she does has to be calculated, void of complacency, but—“You look terrible,” Panam says despite herself, finally seeing the woman standing in front of her.

“It’s good to see you again.” V chuckles—if you could call it that, like she isn’t dying, like she isn’t an empty husk the color of something sickly—and rubs the back of her neck. “And I feel worse.”

Panam’s mind screams at them to move. “Then we had best not waste any time.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The jacket fit her perfectly—a no brainer, really. She looked born into it. Panam watched as they clapped V’s back, shoved her around with wide smiles. She tried not to think about how V had stumbled to the ground just a minute before; buried the invasive thought of going to the maglev line herself, that way it was only her life they were risking and not dozens. But the Aldecaldos will disagree with her sacrifice. They will call it foolish. They will claim nothing can stop them from saving family, not even the pushes and pulls of powers greater than theirs. She wants to damn them for their strong, unyielding love. She damns it as much as she damns her own.

By the time Panam reached the cliff, V and Mitch had gone off with the Basilisk. Panam knows the kind of wary gossip Mitch liked to smuggle out. She can't blame him, or anyone else, for sensing the underlying tension. She may be able to distract herself from the dangers, but her people cannot. Now, sitting atop the solar panel platform, Panam lets her eyes sweep over the entire expanse, starting from the dozen tents to beyond the stone outcroppings that shielded the camp. She sees Saul musing down below her; can weigh the thoughts in his head with her own. As if a mantra, she repeats the plan over and over in her head: Maglev. Militech. SERC. Arasaka. Mikoshi. It all seems to crumble apart once Arasaka looms over them. She pushes down the image of the bodies they will have to count after this. No use worrying now.  
  
The Basilisk’s missiles go off in the distance; Panam can imagine V up in the pilot seat, a little hunched up. We’ll be synced for a bit, Panam had said, their first time inside, and V had licked her lips nervously, eyes focused on some indiscernible point before flitting clumsily away to the control panel. Okay, V had said, and Panam was surprised to find her heart beating wildly behind her ears, mouth dry, unsure of what it meant then, and unsure of what it means now.

The Basilisk returns at the beginnings of dusk. Carol and the rest of the boys call V over for a drink. A part of Panam yearns; she thinks of sitting down with them, but she knows nothing can ease her nerves, not until she sees this through.

“Are you afraid to die?” Panam asks V, long after she finally comes up to join her. It feels sudden, though they have been talking for a while, and the question darts uselessly at the air and stretches the silence between them.

“No.”

“I envy you.”

V turns to her, expression unknown. She looks—good, better than she looked earlier, but still worse. Still dying. The pallid color blemishes her face. Panam holds V’s gaze for a moment before breaking it off to look at the sky, the color now a dark amber.

And then: “I died once,” V says, her voice far away. “Twice. Multiple times. I almost died when I passed out in camp. I guess I’ve always been on the brink of it. The chip - it brings me back each time.”

Below them the Aldecaldos continue to celebrate. Panam wonders who among them will live tomorrow or die. She wonders if Saul has ever looked at his people this way.

“It’s wrong,” V says. “Coming back. It’s—different. I can feel it. Like each time I’m brought back, a part of me that used to be there is . . . gone, like—like it never even existed. And the fucked up thing is, I can’t even remember what I was losing. It's like I’ve lost everything and nothing at all. And one day I’m gonna wake up and there won’t be anything left of the person I used to be, the person I am now . . . and I won’t even know it. That’s what I’m afraid of, you know?”

The last bit comes out sluggish. Panam looks at V; watches the way she stares listlessly at the patches adorned on her thread, the way she hugs her sides and lets the jacket fold and crease around her. Panam thinks about how, not that long ago, V had run her hands over her legs, her thighs; thinks of how quickly she had turned V down. Then Panam thinks, almost miserably, of their shaky breaths together in the Basilisk; of the sand howling and throwing itself at the trailer walls; of how V’s body could have been pressed against hers if she hadn’t stopped her then, how her hands could have been feeling for every curve and crevice on Panam’s skin, her mouth ghosting over Panam’s face and neck in hot, deep breaths. She could have taken V’s face in her hands, could have lost herself in her eyes until they melted together on that fucking couch.

Panam wouldn’t stop her this time, this she knows. She knows she wants V; knows it as well as she knows how the cracked, ugly roads that run through the Badlands lead inextricably to her own heart, thrumming louder than it’s ever been. She’s wanted V all this time, even if she’s only acknowledged it now, though even that doesn’t matter anymore.

V is dying, losing herself, and there is nothing Panam can give her now but her word: They will breach Mikoshi. They will do whatever it takes. She would rather break every bone in her body than consider what comes after.

“We should be heading back,” V says, eyes on the horizon. The sun has already gone.

“No.” Panam leans forward and lets the chaos within her roil, lets it simmer. Her own voice sounds like it’s come from everywhere and nowhere at once. “Let’s stay a while longer.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


They go the next day and the unavoidable happens: Their brothers and sisters die.

Then they infiltrate Arasaka’s substratum, only three of them left.

Two of them left. Panam looks back at Saul’s cold body and risks everything not to fall to her knees.  
  
Then, V jacks into Mikoshi and the world thunders to a halt.

Panam knows there are two outcomes. Regardless, she joins V in the water; holds her limp body close, watching as V’s head floats gently to one side and then the other. Together they are one motion, and the heart of Arasaka beats around them. A minute goes by. Then ten, and then thirty. It’s odd how Panam can keep count so earnestly. V’s body anchors hers down to the cold metal ground that it almost sedates her, stops her from thinking about the lives she traded to get here.

V's breathing slowly becomes the only dynamic thing in the chamber: erratic bursts changing to steady bouts, then the cycle continues. Either way she is still alive, and that is enough reason for Panam to keep counting the seconds for as long she has to.

On the forty-ninth minute and thirty-sixth second V wakes up. Her body does not jolt awake. Her arms do not flail desperately to the side. She does not cough or choke or cry out in some immeasurable pain. What happens is that her eyes flutter open, head cradled by Panam’s hand.

She inhales and exhales like it’s the first time she’s ever done so.

“Don’t think I’ve ever told you my real name, Pan.” V blinks up, voice as quiet and calm as the Mikoshi waters. “It’s Valerie.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> god i love panam and female V with all my heart and i just needed to write this as??? catharsis?? a revelation? ? ? i'll be working on the second chapter soon bc i absolutely cannot stop thinking about these two. thank you for reading <33


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